


blackbird singing in the dead of night

by m3owww



Series: and all the world is upside down [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Batkids Age Reversal, Damian Wayne-centric, Gen, Reverse Robins, bruce wayne is an emotionally constipated parent but he's doing his best, damian is also an emotionally constipated child but he's also doing his best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-16 06:15:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29571618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m3owww/pseuds/m3owww
Summary: If Batman thought Damian was a liability, then he supposed he’d just have to prove him wrong.It wouldn’t be hard to do. After all, Damian was Ibn al Xu’ffasch – the Son of the Bat.Oh, and the fact that he had a katana didn’t hurt either.Or, Damian al Ghul-Wayne becomes his father's partner.
Relationships: Bruce Wayne & Damian Wayne
Series: and all the world is upside down [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2172555
Comments: 15
Kudos: 57





	blackbird singing in the dead of night

**Author's Note:**

> if any of you follow me on tumblr, I've been rambling about this for a while, and the first oneshot in my reverse robins au is finally here! it's not very long, considering how much time I spent on it, but I've been writing three or four of these oneshots at once because my attention span is really really short.
> 
> special thanks to [PepperSoniRoni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PepperSoniRoni/pseuds/PepperSoniRoni) for beta-reading this! Pepper you're literally the best and I love you so freaking much 💜

“No.”

“But Father, I am capable! I can handle it!”

“You are a ten-year-old _child_ ,” Damian’s father grunts. Damian takes the miniscule twitch of his jaw to mean frustration, though he could be wrong. Adept at reading body language as he was, but Father’s microexpressions were still a bit more challenging than he was used to. Just a bit. “And an unknown factor in the field.”

“I have been training since before I could walk,” Damian spits back at his father. “I know one hundred fifty-nine ways to kill a man with my bare hands alone. I am not your average child.” Mother made sure of that. She made sure that her son, the Batman’s son, would be the perfect son. The perfect heir.

Damian thought he had made quite a convincing argument, but Father’s expression hardens further, which is a sign that Damian has learned to mean that his stance is not going to be changing any time soon.

“You are a liability, and Batman cannot afford a liability.” Father turns, striding for the Cave’s exit. “My answer is no, and that’s final. Batman works alone.”

Well then. Damian knew when he’d lost an argument, but he also knew that there were many other ways to go about this.

Long after Father has exited the Cave, Damian lingers, a new plan brewing in his mind. Batman was famous for not working with a single soul other than Jim Gordon, but he was sure Father would make an exception for his own son.

If Batman thought Damian was a liability, then he supposed he’d just have to prove him wrong.

It wouldn’t be hard to do. After all, Damian was Ibn al Xu’ffasch – the Son of the Bat.

Oh, and the fact that he had a katana didn’t hurt either.

* * *

Four hours later, Damian revises his earlier statement. The fact that he had a katana didn’t hurt _him_ , but it definitely hurt the miserable criminals dealing drugs in a grimy alley.

The fight was ridiculously pathetic. From what he’d heard, Gotham criminals were supposed to be _challenging_. These idiots had taken one look at Damian, dressed in all black as he stepped out from the shadows, and laughed at his short stature.

Two minutes later, they weren’t laughing anymore.

“Tt,” Damian scoffs, sheathing his katana and delicately stepping over a body, careful not to step in the blood, and turns to exit the alley.

Instead, he hits a dark, solid wall of muscle.

Damian blinks for a moment, slightly disoriented (Mother would be so disappointed), and looks up into the opaque white lenses that hide Batman's eyes.

“Father,” He greets, unable to keep the smile off his face. Now he _had_ to see that Damian was worthy. He’d eliminated five full-grown men in two minutes. They’d never commit another crime again. Batman’s goal was to clean the streets of Gotham – he was sure to be pleased.

(Damian ignores the tiny part of his mind that reminds him that Batman did not kill. He’s sure Father would overlook such a trivial matter, and now that Damian has shown him that killing stops the scum permanently, Father has most certainly been convinced.)

The scowl that is always on Batman’s face deepens, just a little, and something cold settles in Damian’s stomach when he realizes that no, his father has not been convinced at all.

* * *

“We don’t need to rework your entire fighting style.” Even out of costume, Father cuts an imposing figure by simply being present in the room. He towers above Damian, looking down at him with hard blue eyes, arms crossed. “That would be impractical. Instead, you’re going to have to learn to hold back.”

Hold back? That was an inconceivable notion in the League. You never held back - it was either kill your opponents as quickly as possible or end up dead on the ground with them standing over your body. Damian refused to be the second option, so he’d always done everything in his power to be the best.

Damian’s poker face must not be good enough, because Father’s eyes narrow just as he opens his mouth to voice his thoughts. “You’re not going out into the field until you learn not to use lethal force, Damian. I designed the training dummies to let you know when a strike would kill a person. I suggest you start practicing.”

* * *

_You’re not going out into the field until you learn not to use lethal force_ , Father had said. But Father said ‘until’, which meant that when he learned not to kill, Damian would join his Father on his crusade. He takes that as a victory.

But that won’t ever come to be if he doesn’t train.

So that’s what Damian does. He spends every free moment in the Cave, whaling at the training dummies. Punch. Punch. Feint. Dodge, as if the dummy was actually fighting back. Shift one leg ever so slightly so the kick won’t be lethal. Punch. Block. Kick-

His foot connects with the dummy’s head with too much force and the head comes clean off, flying across the Cave and hitting the floor, bouncing once, twice, three times before rolling to a stop at Father’s feet. The sound echoes through the otherwise silent cavern, and a small part of his mind notes that even the bats are silent when the head finally stops.

The training dummies had been designed to break upon a lethal strike, or let the user know when they applied too much force.

This was the two hundred and thirty-sixth dummy Damian had broken.

Father looks down at the head by his feet, back up to Damian, down to the head, up again. Damian does not hold his breath. Of course not. He merely… forgets to breathe as his chest tightens with apprehension. Father may have a no-killing rule, but the League had taught him that there were many, many things worse than death.

But instead, Father merely grunts (he tended to do that a lot), turning and heading for the large computer, probably to work on yet another case. They never seemed to end.

Damian slowly exhales, as to not catch his father’s attention, just in case, and gets started on dummy number two hundred and thirty-seven.

* * *

When he finishes the last training session of the day without breaking a dummy for the fiftieth day in a row, Damian doesn’t know how to feel when he realizes that his first instinct is to look over at Father to gauge his reaction. He searches for something in his father’s blue eyes, something in his expression that will tell him he hasn’t failed. That he isn’t a disappointment.

Father stands, arms crossed (as they always seem to be), and to anyone else, his face has not changed. But in the six months Damian has been here, he’s slowly learned to read his father’s microexpressions, the tiniest shifts and twitches that betray Father’s emotions.

Right now, there’s this odd combination of happiness and something else Damian hasn’t seen yet on his father, something that looks similar to the way Mother’s eyes used to look when he was young, after he’d won his first spar and killed his first man.

Could it be pride? Could it be that Father was proud of him?

The last time someone was proud of him was…

When was the last time someone was proud of him?

Damian remembered seeing that look in Mother’s eyes as a child, but when did it stop being there? When did it fade away, out of existence?

When did he stop being enough?

* * *

His uniform is solid black, to aid in blending in at night. Damian doesn’t _need_ to wear all black to hide in the shadows, obviously. He’s been trained since he could walk in the art of stealth.

But Father wears all black and dark greys as Batman, and so Damian does too.

“Are you sure you don’t want some more… color in your suit, Master Damian?” Alfred asks, and Damian pauses for a moment. Just a moment, as he considers adding something that isn’t black or gray.

But then that single moment passes, and his resolve to be like his father only strengthens.

“I am sure, Alfred,” He says decisively, and that is the end of that.

Black is the color that Father wears. The color that Batman wears. As Batman’s partner, he has to do the same.

Besides, there was no way he could be nearly as intimidating if he was dressed in, say, red and yellow and green. He’d look like a walking traffic light.

Damian’s nose wrinkles in disgust at the thought.

* * *

Batman silently drops down onto the roof of the police station behind an unaware Jim Gordon, Damian quickly following suit. He doesn’t stumble the tiniest bit on the landing because he’s still not fully used to using a grapple. Of course not.

Gordon turns around forty-three seconds after they land, and the first words out of his mouth are “Batman, is that a _kid?_ ”

Batman grunts, and Damian bristles at the Captain’s tone.

“I assure you, I am more than worthy of my position as Batman’s partner,” He sneers, drawing his katana. The light of the signal makes it glint menacingly in the shadowed darkness that is Gotham’s night. “Would you like a demonstration?”

The Captain just stares at him for a moment, blinking once, before turning back to Batman. “Are you serious? You’re joking, right? This is a joke.”

The tiny huff of air that exits Batman’s nose would be a long, drawn-out sigh to anyone else. “Captain, this is my partner.”

“Oh, what the fu- heck,” Gordon says, after taking exactly four seconds for his brain to process Batman’s words. “This city’s messed up anyway. You got a name, kid?”

At Batman’s pointed look, Damian grudgingly puts the katana away. “You may address me as Demon.” It was a simple name, but it would strike fear into the hearts of Gotham’s scum soon enough, if it didn’t already.

However, Gordon simply looks amused. “Demon, huh? Funny. You don’t even seem big enough to be a Blackbird.”

“My _name_ ,” Damian repeats slowly, because this man evidently lacked brainpower, “is _Demon_.”

The Captain’s eyes just twinkle with more amusement, and he reaches his hand out, probably to pat Damian on the head or ruffle his hair. Damian refuses to let such a thing happen, and he bats Gordon’s hand away with a hiss and teeth bared in a snarl. Next to him, Batman sighs again.

“Well, it was nice to meet you, uh, Blackbird,” Gordon says after a moment of hesitation, and Damian opens his mouth to correct the fool again, but the Captain is turning away and Batman is flashing the hand signal that means _go_ , so he snaps his mouth shut again and dutifully follows his father as they jump off the roof onto a hidden ledge not far below.

“I do not see why you bother to work with that idiot,” Damian whispers angrily, just in case Gordon can still hear them. “He cannot even call me by my proper-”

“Let’s go, Blackbird,” Batman cuts him off, the wind whipping his cape rather dramatically as he looks out over the city. “The city’s criminals won’t wait for us.”

“My name is not _Blackbird_ ,” Damian complains, but Batman has already shot his grappling hook into the night sky and is swinging off, expecting him to follow.

Damian leaps off the ledge and swings through the air, following closely behind his father. The wind whips past his face but his hood stays firmly in place, and a tiny part of him wonders if this is what it feels like to fly.

 _Perhaps,_ he muses, as he lands on a rooftop next to his father, the lights scattered throughout the building windows just barely enough to see the slightly darker shadow that is Batman. _Perhaps Blackbird is not such a terrible name after all._

**Author's Note:**

> I have so many feelings about this au and I fully intend to write at least 10 more oneshots ~~but there's thirty in my plans~~
> 
> come find me on [tumblr](m3owww.tumblr.com)!


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